The original Atlanta blog.

Ok, so maybe this Darrin guy isn't quite as bad as I am making him out to be. In other news, I took a new contracting assignment today relaunching a site for a major sports media organization. Exciting stuff, new technology, and a great team from the looks of things. I wish I could tell you more, but you know the drill. This is making it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the stored procedures and cfml code that I am currently working on. Next week is going to be a very long week.

I've been under the weather the last couple of days, missed a day and half of work with some sort of stomach/flu bug. I did get to do a lot of reading yesterday, and I read Jennifer Government from cover to cover in addition to finishing up a couple of other books that I have been working on. I enjoyed Jennifer Government's tone and story, and I liked the commentary on one possible future that the book made. I'd recommend it to people who enjoy dark cyberpunk type material.

Without a doubt, this was my favorite commercial during last night's big game. I enjoyed the game, even if it wasn't as close as everyone thought it was going to be. I think that the Buc's defense established themselves as one of the greatest defenses of all time last night, although they should have already had that distinction after the last four years. I also think that it was clear that Grudin outcoached his former assistant, and that the deal that brought him to Tampa was a worthwhile one.

I've been sort of busy this week, with various things going on. I do have some posting type material for later when I do have time. I've lost five pounds so far on my renewed workout plan, have successfully manipulated my sleep schedule to an early to bed early to rise one, and have finished several books, so I'm more on track than I was at the end of 2002. Lots of room for improvement, still.

So, if the next generation of TiVo is going to support Rendezvous, could it be possible that this is the first step in some sort of handheld video playback device (read iPod) from Apple that integrates with TiVo? Just a thought.

Politically, I'm most definitely an independent. Invariably, this leads to healthy disagreements with people from both sides of the political spectrum. Generally, I tend to be more socially liberal, and more fiscally conservative. From Republicans, especially the tow the party line sort that I tend to be exposed to these days, I tend to get a liberal label, and they seem to use this label in a very mean spirited manner, although I think I'm much closer to centrist Republicans than I am to most Democrats. I tend to differ from Democrats in terms of practical matters, at least in my viewpoint. I find some of their stands to be just silly. I've been studying up a little on possible candidates in 2004 from the Democrats, especially since Dori and Tom have been covering it once in a while. This has led me to believe that the person who has announced for 2004 that is the most similar to my viewpoints thus far is Howard Dean. This leads to somewhat of a problem for me, he really doesn't have the fund raising or organizational support that is necessary to win a nomination. I find this especially troubling because I was the first person to be critical of people throwing their support behind non-practical candidate Ralph Nader in 2000. I wish that Bush's policies resembled those under which he campaigned in 2000, but they don't and they seem to be going further right as time goes on. We need campaign finance reform in a big way so that people like Howard Dean have a practical chance of winning.

In the NFL playoffs, things went much the way I expected them to yesterday. I realize now that it would be more fair of me to make predictions public before I make such claims. So we have the two teams with pirate symbols playing the big game next weekend. I haven't fully thought through the matchup yet, but I am willing to bet that this game will not be a blowout in either direction. After seeing the games yesterday, I have to give the coaching edge to Tampa Bay, their gameplan against Philadelphia was perfect, and their players executed on it. The Raider's offense hasn't seen a defense in the same league as the one they will be facing next weekend. So I guess I am leaning towards Tampa Bay at this point.

Well, I'm on the cusp of a decision about new hardware for this coming year. I have decided that there are three ways to go, but haven't/can't make up my mind about things. Right now I have a first generation TiBook which came with a 500Mhz processor, an underpowered graphics card, a 30Gb hard drive, and 512 Mb of RAM. I also have a Sony Vaio laptop which has a 650Mhz P3, a 20Gb hard drive, 512 Mb of RAM, and an underpowered graphics card. I can't afford to replace both of these machines this year, and the TiBook is slightly older than the Vaio, so I'm leaning that way. The Area 51, however, looks real nice and the benchmarks on it are sick. On the other hand, a 17 inch screen seems like a good thing to have. So it's either replace one of these two machines, or make some incremental upgrades to one or both of them. There aren't any processor upgrades or video chipset upgrades available for the TiBook or the Vaio though. So I could add more RAM, and upgrade the hard drive, but I'm stuck with the internals. Decisions, Decisions.

Not much time this morning to update. I threw some stuff up on Kungfumaster though. You will have to be happy with that for the time being. I have to say, while I am at it, that changing my sleep schedule two weeks ago, although at times painful, has been a great decision. I feel like doing more.

I got my first Moleskine about eight months ago. Since then, I have become addicted to these amazing little notebooks. Imagine my suprise upon discovering today's Metafilter Thread about them. I now have about four or five of the small ones that I keep in my computer bag and use throughout the day.

As depressing as the Supreme Court decision on the Eldred case is, for some reason all I can think about is how much we need campaign finance reform. We need to find a way to divorce big money interests from politicians. Otherwise, the good of the public will always be subverted by the need to get elected or re-elected.

Infosync: AT & T Wireless subscribers will be able to vote on the next American Idol season using their SMS capable phones according to this article. I'm sure this is just a trial balloon for the network and ATT, but this could be the start of something a lot bigger here in the US where SMS hasn't really taken off like in Japan and the Scandinavian countries. I think my major concern about the possible success of something like this is that even most tech savvy people I know don't use SMS messaging from their phones at all. My more non-technical friends don't even know how to use the phone in this manner. My Danger, which supports sms messaging, has the major hole in it's operating system that does not let you generate SMS messages from listings in your address book. I think that the current lines of phones could be improved quite a bit in terms of the ease of text messaging.

David Pogue has an interesting article discussing upcoming TiVO features in today's Circuits section of the New York Times. The good news is that, as of April, the phone jack requirement to access program data will go away, and you will be able to connect to their service online. The not so good news is that it looks like those of us with first series machines will not get all of the new features. I guess I'm not that concerned about that particular aspect, I'm going to hold onto this first generation machine, with its lifetime subscription to the service, as long as I can.

Mariucci is fired by 49ers. Not such a good move for the franchise as far as I'm concerned, the guy is one of the best coaches in the league. I get the impression that this thing is really about egos and coaching styles. Bill Walsh, who is one of the greatest offensive minds in the history of the game, wanted to run one style of offense with, of course, a pass focus. Mariucci wanted to run the ball more. I'm certain that he won't be looking for a job for very long. Personally, I'd love to see him here in Atlanta, but I doubt that is going to happen any time in the near future.(That's another post for another time.)

Matt is at Yosemite. I went there years ago, before my involvement in the Web, and before I was chained to my desk at work all day moving text around on a screen. I think at the time, I was splitting my time between DJing at a club two nights a week, working at a record store three or four days a week, and working at a comic shop on the weekend days. That's not really very relevant to this post though. Yosemite changed me as a person. The place is like a church to me. The scale of everything reminded me how small I am, and how large and beautiful the world is. I suspect a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was living in a very urban New York environment at the time. I think about that trip all the time, not because I think about the woman I was dating at the time who went with me, but because I was changed as a person from standing in that park. Oddly, I haven't gotten back there since that trip despite many business and pleasure trips to California since then. America is a grand country, with so much to see, so much beauty, and so many incredible people, it makes vacation planning a nightmare in a good way.

Mena said, "For those who use Movable Type and are interested in moblogging and blogging from PDAs and handhelds, this purchase is good news." It sure is. I've been contemplating a move to some other backend setup for some time. This might push me over the top.

I have another major beef with the hiplogging feature of Danger's Sidekick service. You cannot include links in your postings. Now, I'm not really a blog purist by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that the ability to post more than just a bunch of plain text is a basic blog feature. I mean, this is one of the primary purposes of having a blog in the first place. Come on people, get with the program, get some perspective on what people use their blogs for, and clean up that darned copyright statement too. Update: you can include links and styled text in postings as documented here. I'm not sure why they went with a non-HTML syntax for this particular feature. HTML works, and people already know it.

Console games, especially those for the PS2, have taken a sort of weird turn in the last year. It's becoming more and more common for the more popular games to try and sell more merchandise than just that particular game. Two recent examples from my gaming library include Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Madden NFL 2003. In order to get to additional cheat codes for Vice City, one can purchase one of the six soundtrack cd's that go along with the game or the boxed set of all six cd's. In order to get to some of the cheat cards in Madden, one must own other EA Sports games. I suspect that many other gamers fall victim to the same anxiety over possibly missing out on something cool that I do, leading to the purchase of some or all of these additional objects. I wonder how long this will go on before it gets completely ridiculous.

Here's why I haven't set myself up with a blog on Danger's hiptop site. I can't believe how clueless this particular decision is. I write stuff, I should get to decide how it is available to others for their use, end of story. (via evhead)

This review of Windows XP Media Center Edition is a good informative read. I was curious, despite my entertainment hobbled living room layout, if this is something I should be considering. If they had found a way to make these machines also play Xbox games, they would have added another selling point.

Oops. Seems that the power went out in my house at some point when I wasn't there in the last two days, and I failed to notice. As a result, I haven't been able to update. I should have checked this out last night, but I changed my sleep schedule this week to a much earlier to bed and earlier to rise one. Updates resume, well, now.

Apple has already updated the .Mac home page with information about some of the things that are being announced in relation to that service at MacWorld today. The biggest seems to be an online address book that is iSync compatible.

Macromedia has made Mac OS X compatible developer editions of JRun and ColdFusion available as of today. This is a landmark moment for both companies in my opinion, and a major boon to those of us who develop with ColdFusion, but also enjoy the chewy goodness of Mac OS X.

Update: Infoworld Article on the Subject. I find the fact that Apple refused comment amusing. When I was at Macromedia Devcon 2002, I talked at length to Phil Costa, the Product Manager for ColdFusion, and to the Apple folks that were at the show about this particular subject. Apple said that they wanted Macromedia to support their platform with their server technologies and that was one of the reasons that they were at Devcon in the first place. So, when they finally get this, they refuse comment?

Here's Apple's worst move yet, assuming it's true. They have continued to squeeze more and more revenue out of their customers, and I can only imagine that it is now getting to the point where people will begin abandoning them for this. This move takes away one of their competitive advantages over Windows in a big way. No a good vibe at all, but it sticks with the theme set by iTools, get people used to something when it is free, then charge them for it.

In keeping with resolution number one below, I have started the year off by delving into some books. I read on a regular basis, and I probably read close to 100 books in 2002, but I wanted to create a formal goal that would make me want to strive to read even more than I had been. So this week I'm reading:

Welcome to 2003. I look forward to this being a year of personal growth, enhanced learning, and increased health. My New Year's Eve was enjoyable and a little wild, and I spent it and New Year's Day with some great new friends. One thing I know for sure, I am excited by the opportunities that life has presented me with for the New Year. I hope everyone else had a good safe New Year's Eve, and I wish everyone the best in the new year.